No hive or box should have its breeding combs left more than five years; and in general, after the first year, the lower boxes will be found to be principally occupied for this purpose.
By this practice for four years out of every five, whatever combs are removed will be new ones, which, on account of the purity both of the wax and the honey, are greatly preferable to old ones.
Virgil, probably copying his predecessor Aristotle, describes two harvests of honey every year, namely, in the spring and in the autumn.
“The golden harvest twice each year o’erflows,
Thou, twice each year, the plenteous cells unclose,
Soon as fair Pleïas, bright’ning into day.
Scorns with indignant foot the wat’ry way,
Or, when descending down th’ aërial steep,
She pours her pale ray on the wintry deep.”
Sotheby’s Georgics.
"Varro mentions three harvests; namely, at the rising of the Pleiads, about the twenty-second of April; the latter end of summer, and when the same stars set about the end of October: Columella recommends them to take place about the twenty-fifth of April and the twenty-ninth of June; Pliny in May and July; and Palladius in June only."—Evans.
Should such an accident occur as the destruction of a queen, by the introduction of a divider (and she might be so unfortunately situated as to fall a sacrifice to it), the stock will appear very much distressed and very restless all day, particularly if there be no Royal Embryo or no very young larva; for in either of these cases they will soon become reconciled. But if neither of them be present, and the bees be left to themselves, they will lose their wonted activity, gradually dwindle in number and pine away: or they will transfer their allegiance to another sovereign; and in that case, convey all the treasured sweets of their own hive, to that of the family they join. The only remedy for such a misfortune is to unite the bees to another stock, in the manner already directed, or to procure a supernumerary queen from another family. The latter, however, is an operation which few will have courage to attempt.